Horse for the Course: Moots Routt 45 for the Dirty Kanza 200

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Now pushing into it’s 11th year, the Dirty Kanza stands as the staple of the gravel grinder race calendar. From the days when you weren’t allowed a GPS computer and had to rely on paper maps, cue cards and a compass to a fully-fledged race with checkpoints jammed full of hundreds of support vehicles and live tracking to keep supporters abreast of the chess-match like action (206 miles is a long way, you know).

• Horse For The Course: Specialized CruX for the Dirty Kanza 200
• Horse for the Course: Raleigh Roker Race for the Dirty Reiver

The course: The Dirty Kanza 200

The equipment goal: To find out what the titanium loving crowd have been shouting about all these years

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The horse: A Moots Routt 45 — an adventure/dirt/gravel specific bike with huge clearance that I most definitely didn't make the most of with 36mm tyres

While BikeRadar’s Dirty Kanza veteran Josh Patterson finally nabbed the Race the Sun prize (to cross the finish line before the official sunset time) on his sixth attempt, I opted for a different approach featuring four punctures, four tyres and a whole heap of soda — but more on that later. Firstly, the bike.

The before

Named after the Routt National Park nearby to Moots' hometown of Steamboat Springs, the Routt range is an evolution of their highly regarded Psychlo X cyclocross frames. The Routt aims to tackle the roads less travelled, a cycling sub-genre that has picked up enormous traction in recent years and has pushed dedicated roadies further, and further off-road.

The relatively long wheelbase of the frame made riding the bike feel like a session of yoga on wheels

In the early days of the DK, riders had to be entirely self supported and even GPS devices were outlawed

The after

I can’t fault the tyres for performance. Not once did I feel like I was getting too loose

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